


Home for the Holidays

by Tallulah_Rasa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Christmas-related, Friendship, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5930143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallulah_Rasa/pseuds/Tallulah_Rasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A blizzard.  A zat.  An alien device.  Another Christmas for SG-1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home for the Holidays

**Author's Note:**

> A little thingy for JDJunkie, with a couple of prompts ("zat" and "snow") cribbed from the Events Horizon gift exchange. Originally posted on DW in December, 2015.

 

 Jack figured the successive thumps had something to do with the storm, but he opened the door, anyway. 

 

He was greeted by an icy blast of wind, a flurry of snowflakes, and, unexpectedly, a shivering archeologist in snow-encrusted BDUs.

 

"What are you doing here?" was all Jack could think to say.

 

Daniel stamped his feet, futilely trying to clear his boots, and gave Jack a look. 

 

Jack stood back. 

 

Daniel hurried over the threshold and toed off his boots, soaking his socks in the process.  He stared at his feet for a moment, frowned, and then discarded his socks and jacket in a soggy pile before heading for the kitchen.  

 

Jack hung up the jacket and draped the socks by the fireplace before following in Daniel's wake.  He was fairly successful at drowning out the pervasive feeling of deja vu that came with watching Daniel's back, but less so with the little voice in his head – Daniel's of course – pointing out the symbolism of the whole situation, and its traditional archetypal meanings.

 

When he got to the kitchen, Daniel was already warming something in a pan on the stove.

 

"There's a blizzard outside," Jack said.

 

"Mmmm," Daniel agreed, rooting through Jack's cabinets.

 

"The roads are closed," Jack went on.  

 

"Well, yeah, but I had a bunch of frequent flyer miles set to expire," Daniel said, not turning around.

 

"The airports are closed," Jack said.  "What'd you do, fly Oma Express?"

 

Daniel didn't react, or even answer, and Jack's  warning sensors kicked into gear.

 

"Daniel…?"

 

"Everything’s fine, Jack," Daniel said, in what Jack knew was Daniel's _trust me_ voice

 

It wasn't particularly reassuring.

 

"But…?" Jack asked. 

 

Daniel was now fussing with two mugs, pouring such precise amounts of powder into first one, and then the other, that Jack thought he must be following an ancient Egyptian recipe. 

 

Or, maybe, an Ancient one.

 

_"Daniel…"_ he urged, because the hair on the back of his neck was starting to prickle in a very familiar way.

 

"I was on P3J--" Daniel began.

 

"The one with the horse people, I know," Jack said.  "With SG-5.  I _know_ that.  But now you're here, so…"

 

"So, there was an artifact that I—"

 

"Touched?" Jack asked, squinting at Daniel, and the stove, and trying to remember where Ba’al was at the moment, and who’d last had a run-in with the Ancients, and whether this was really Daniel, or some other dimension's Daniel, or someone or something _disguised_ as Daniel.

 

Daniel rolled his eyes.  "No.  After we finished our survey, I secured the artifact and brought it back to the SGC."

 

"And…?" Jack asked insistently.  " _And…_?"

 

"And as soon as we got through the Gate," Daniel said, carefully pouring whatever had been in the pan into each of the mugs, "I found out that the device's physical interface was extremely sensitive to specific types of neural suggestions, at least in conjunction with a particularly calibrated proximate digital manipulation."

 

"Which means _?_ "Jack demanded.

 

"I touched something," Daniel admitted.  "And then the device transported me to the road that goes by your house."

 

Jack stared at him.  "The road's under two feet of snow," he said, because he'd learned that when you didn't have the whole story, it was strategically important to verify the details you _did_ have. 

 

"It turns out that a zat set to 'stun’ can melt snow and ice," Daniel said. "And also, possibly asphalt, but you may not want to know how I know that."  He held out a steaming mug, and Jack automatically accepted it.

 

Jack processed that and took a cautious sip from his mug.  It turned out to be hot chocolate, which greatly reduced Jack's internal Defcon levels.

 

"You had a zat in your hand when you got transported?" he asked.

 

Daniel made a face.  "Long story," he said.

 

"What are you doing here, Daniel?' Jack asked gently.

 

Daniel pushed up his glasses.  "The world's not ending, if that's you're worried about," he said.

 

Jack raised his eyebrows.

 

Daniel took a sip from his mug.  "I'm _fine,"_ he insisted after he swallowed.  "I don't even have a cold."

 

"So…?"

 

"So…," Daniel said with a shrug.

 

"Did Landry threaten to lock you out of your office if you didn’t take some time off?" Jack asked.

 

"No!  Well, yes, but…"

 

"But…?"

 

"You're in East Nowhere, Minnesota, Jack.  I heard a weather report before I left;  I knew you were going to be snowed in over Christmas.  Apparently I was thinking about that when I, uh…"

 

"Touched something?" Jack asked.

 

"The device we retrieved has a very sensitive neural interface," Daniel said evenly.

 

"Ruby slippers would have accomplished the same thing," Jack said.

 

Daniel didn't answer that.

 

Jack added a healthy slug of whiskey to his hot chocolate, added the same to Daniel's, and took a long slurp.  "So, when are Carter and Teal'c getting here?"

 

Daniel looked up from his mug then, and Jack could see the hint of a smile, as well as a hint of a chocolate mustache.  "Later tonight, probably," Daniel said.  
 

"They have frequent flyer miles too?" Jack asked.

   
"Something like that," Daniel said.

 

"Good thing I bought extra groceries," Jack said.  

 

"Good thing," Daniel agreed.

 

They stood there for a few seconds in companionable silence, until the the lights stuttered, cut out, and then stuttered on again. 

 

"They keep doing that," Jack said with a sigh. "I _knew_ I should have replaced the generator.  Eventually they’ll go out for good, and Christmas dinner will be canned soup heated in the fireplace."

 

"Maybe not," Daniel said.  "It turns out a zat set to 'stun' can roast a wild animal, defrost frozen foods, and power a coffee-maker.  Though…you may not want to know how I know that."

 

"Ooooo-kay," Jack said.  He raised his mug and waited patiently until Daniel recognized, processed, categorized, and cross-referenced the ritual, and then lifted his own.  _I don't think this is what Norman Rockwell had in mind_ he thought, but that wasn't what he wanted to say, and nothing else occurred to him, so he simply clinked his mug against Daniel’s.

 

Daniel smiled, and Jack could see the flickering ghosts of Christmases past, of the people they’d been, of arguments and laughter and desperation, of alien stars in another galaxy and cold beers on a rooftop in Colorado Springs.    
  
He nodded at Daniel and finished off his hot chocolate.

 

"Yeah," Daniel said.  "That's...yeah.  Me, too."

 

 


End file.
